I Want to Get Up When I Wake Up, But When I Get Up, I Fall Down

Last weekend, last weekend. We're on to last weekend. So, it was all okay. The big problem is that I tried to go running right during an unexpected snowfall. I figured it would be safer, because the snow would cover the ice and give me more traction. WRONG! I got a little over a mile with no problems, and then I hit a hidden patch of ice and went down hard.

I kept trying to run, but more carefully and kept slipping and sliding and by the time I got to about 2.5 miles in, and realized it was too dangerous for me to even walk in the grass. So, I threw in the towel and called John to come get me. I do realize that I am very lucky to have a husband that I can call and he is in his car and headed my way in a flash. I have done the same for him, so at least I don't have to also feel too badly about it.

I was worried that I'd have some repercussions from my great fall, but so far, I'm okay. Yea!

After the run, John and I worked on painting the kitchen ceiling. It went pretty quickly with me brush painting the edges and John painting the middle with the roller. Of course, we can't forget Archie's incredible job as supervisor.

On Sunday I figured it might be a good idea to take off from running and John and I swam laps instead. I hadn't been swimming in a few weeks, but I was happy to find out that I hadn't lost too much of my swimming muscle strength. The best part was that I got to go to the jacuzzi after my swim and let the jets do some work on the hip I fell on...Also, watching the little kids learn how to climb on the rock climbing wall was really fun.

Most of our weekend was spent doing the ceiling project. Which may not have been all that much fun, but it was great to get it done. Above is the before shot where you can see the popcorn ceiling with all its dirtcicles hanging off of it and the hideous old, white, ceiling fan and lights with the cow painted pulls. Yeesh!

On Sunday I did some touch-up painting while John installed the new ceiling fans. They are super swank looking, all black and chrome. As you can see, I still have to paint the heating vent and exhaust fan black, but I have to wait until it's warm enough to paint them outside.

You can also see that the walls are next. We have most of the bad bits scraped and hopefully, this weekend we'll get the spackling paste, sand paper, primer and paint to get going on that. So much to do, but at least, these kinds of projects make such a difference in making our place look better, as opposed to the structural projects we put a ton of money into and nobody can see any difference.

An Aversion to Light, Got a Fear of the Ocean. Like Eating Poison, Like Eating Glass.

Archie would rather lie on the recycling instead of the box that John left out for him. Silly cat.

I'm having a bad day, and this time it has nothing to do with the cats. I brought a half of an avocado stuffed with tuna salad for lunch and had some black bean soup as well. I take my lunch in glass containers, since heating food in plastic containers is supposed to be very bad for you. The glass containers are much heavier in my bike bag when I ride to work, but that's because the glass is so thick. I was hoping that meant it would be fairly durable, but today I was proved wrong. The glass container with the avocado slid off the soup container and fell to the carpeted ground and smashed on impact when I was carrying them back to my lair. Strangely enough, the avocado fell on its shell, but there were little pieces of glass sticking to the wrinkled, outside skin. I was starving and the soup wasn't going to be very filling, so after I cleaned the glass off of the carpet, I looked closely and ran my finger along things and decided to risk taking a couple of bites of the top part of the avocado and tuna salad. I know, I know, was it really worth dying for? If you know me and my love of food, you'll understand what my answer to that will be...Yeah, kinda.

While I was eating the soup, one of my co-workers walked by, pointed at my soup and asked, "What's THAT?" I told her it was black bean soup. She said, "Oh, it looked like gravy and I wondered why you'd be eating a bowlful of gravy." I had never thought of doing that before, but I could probably be very happy eating a bowl full of gravy.

When I got back to my desk and told the ladies in my office about my trials during lunch, one of them said, "Eat some cotton balls."

"What?"

"Yeah. If you've swallowed glass, you're supposed to eat cotton balls so the glass will stick to them," she said.

"Wait. How do you know that?"

"I have no idea," she responded.

Needless to say, I haven't tried eating any cotton balls. I guess it would sop up the imaginary gravy I had for lunch. I'll just have to hope that I didn't accidentally swallow any glass. I suppose I'll find out when I take a drink of water and it flows out of the holes the glass made in me.

And Knowing That You Would Have Wanted it This Way, I Do Believe I'm Feeling Stronger Every Day

Wow. It's Friday already? It's been a busy, but really nice week. I'm finally building back up from being sick for so long. Whew!

Last weekend started out great. I woke up to bagels and cream cheese that John got while I was sleeping, I had half and half for my tea, and I got to read more of "The Count of Monte Cristo". It was the best way to wake up.

I got a run in and then we met some friends to Cross Country ski at Lake MacBride. The snow was pretty slow, but that helps me ski the downhills that I'm normally too scared to ski very well.

I also got a little cocky and tried to ski down what I call butt plow hill - because I usually plow down it on my ass. This time, there were several big roots or branches that made it even harder to ski. Not too surprisingly, I ended up walking sideways down it for a while, then tried to ski it, then fell and couldn't get up (Life Alert) and then finally got up and skied the very last little bit of it while trying not to poop my ski pants, I was so scared.

After a couple of hours of playing in the snow, we headed over to Big Grove and met some friends and my daughters for dinner. I had exactly one beer, ate and had a great talk with my girls and then we headed home. I was exhausted. It was the longest I had worked-out since the beginning of January.

On Sunday we went skiing in the morning and then in the afternoon headed over to John's Aunt's Memorial. I think at first, John's mom was worried she'd get stuck spending too much time with the members of her family she didn't want to talk to, but instead, she got to see a lot of people from her small town who she hadn't seen in years and it ended up being a good thing for her. John's cousin did an amazing job of putting it all together and I think it was a very positive way to celebrate John's Aunt's life.

After the Memorial, I was going to go home and make Eggplant Parmesan for dinner, but I wasn't up for it, so we went to Short's and bothered Coadster at work instead. I ended up making the Eggplant Parmesan on Monday night and it was delicious, even though Heidi was pretty horrified at its lack of fish, chicken, or turkey.

What we haven't done much of this last week, is paint the damn ceiling of our kitchen. Archie is just fine with that. He's been having a blast playing in the plastic tarp we're using to cover stuff while we work.

This week was also Valentine's Day. John went to his mom's house that evening, and my girls came over to see me. We got Coadster's favorite, Happy Joe's taco pizza, and watched Harry Potter, and it was the perfect way to celebrate our Galentine's Day.

We'll see what this weekend brings. The snow is gone, but it should be pretty warm. I know I don't act like it, but I have a 25K part trail run coming up in April and I need to get cracking on training for it. Also, I'm sure I'll feel like painting our kitchen ceiling...Or not.

Sometimes It's Hard to be a Woman

I just realized it's 2018 and about 20 years ago, I worked in the OB/Gyn clinic at the University hospital here. At that time, my girls looked like they do in the photo above and Stinky had meningitis. So, because of all of that, I am going to repost a blog I wrote several years ago about what it was like to work in obstetrics and gynecology in the late 1990's:

You may not want to work here if you either hate or love babies. If you hate babies you will be forced to deal with them on a daily basis. Many women who come back for their six week post-partum appointment will bring their spawn and someone has to hold them while their mothers are back in the stir-ups again. That somebody would be you.

If you love babies, your heart will break several times during your shift. You will have to treat pregnant women who have already had their last five children taken away from them and they'll claim that this time will be different. You won't believe them. You may also have to draw blood from women who tell you right off the bat that you won't find a usable vein. "Believe me. If there was one I could get to, I would have already found it and used it up." Since these women have very few teeth in their heads, you may make the assumption that what they're slamming in their veins is crank. Then when you are actually lucky enough to find one, your patients will get all excited and pay very careful attention to it's location so they can rush right home and slam some more.

You may not want to work here if you are a heterosexual male or a homosexual female and you want to stay attracted to women. There are many things you will see, hear and most importantly, smell that could dim your sexual interest. Just as, I am sure, there are several other clinics in the hospital that would have a similar effect on heterosexual women and homosexual men.

You may not want to work here if you have problems dealing with difficult people. On Thursdays you will be assigned to work the menopause clinic in the morning and the PMS clinic in the afternoon. If you choose this position, you might want to start cultivating a healthy after-work alcohol drinking regimen on Thursdays as well.

You may not want to work here if you are afraid of old people. You will see all kinds of women in various forms of undress here. There are certain clinics such as the uro-gyn clinic that is mainly populated by women with incontinence issues and most are over forty. For our own amusement, we prefer to think of this as the Ida/Eunice/Madge clinic, as opposed to the colposcopy clinic (dealing with the treatment of abnormal cells on the cervix generally as the result of exposure to HPV) which is mainly attended by women in their early twenties and therefore called the Ashley/Brittany/Nicole clinic.

You may not want to work here if you have a hard time saying no. Many women think that the root of any or all of their problems is harboring a uterus. They will ask you in several different ways if you will please see to it that their uterus is removed. Doctors are reluctant to perform a hysterectomy for no reason, as the surgery could cause scar tissue and sudden menopausal symptoms that may be much worse than the original complaint. Your job will be to tell these women, no - even if they try to trick you by calling their womb a cooter bug, which has happened, let me assure you.

You may not want to work here if you you have a hard time telling people things they don't want to accept. Many times the horrible pain women are feeling and are sure are fibroids, ectopic pregnancies, or endometriosis, is really just gas. You must be delicate in the delivery of this diagnosis as these same women are going to have to go home and tell their husbands that the tumor they were sure was only going to give them six more months to live, can easily be treated with Metamucil.

Oh yeah, the pay sucks, you don't get breaks and rarely will you get the chance to sit down for five minutes to eat your lunch. Now, when can you start?

Is There Anyone Here Who Doesn't Know? We're Under Fifteen Feet of Pure, White Snow.

Well, I'm finally almost over this stupid flu. The only good thing about it is that I got to read a whole bunch the last month. I just finished the last couple of Harry Potter books. I'm sad I'll never be able to read them again for the first time, but I am so damn happy that I got to read them these last couple of years. I guess, now I'll have to start watching the movies. I'm sure my girls will be up for that.

So, what have I been up to these last couple of weeks? I'm sure you're all dying to find out. The weekend before last I was still too sick to work-out, but that Saturday was almost 50 degrees out, so John and went for a hike in Hickory Hill Park, about a mile from our house. It was just what I needed.

We found a new trail that was made by the Burr Oak Land Trust. I have some info about them, so I hope to get to do some work on the new trails they buy and help them out any way I can. I love the idea.

And the new trail was pretty cool. They had ruins from some old structures and I love seeing those.

We got about 2.5 miles in on the hike before I was absolutely exhausted. My lungs still weren't up to snuff and it was hard to breathe. So, we headed home and John went on a bike ride and I went to the store and then rested at home. We then headed to our friend's RAGBRAI announcement party. It's going to be a central Iowa route, which is what I predicted. It will make it easier for us to ride out to RAGBRAI this year. We won't be clocking 614 miles, and that is fine with me. We also will get home on Friday this year. Which will be more than nice.

Most of this week, I've been building back up. Last weekend, I did a trail run very slowly and it still kicked my arse. I also swam laps and rode for a half an hour on the trainer, very slowly.

We got a really nice snowfall on Monday and we were supposed to have a crazy Winter storm last night, but we only got 1.25 inches here. They're still saying we could get 1-3 inches tonight and I'm all for it. I plan to cross country ski all weekend. Yea!

Heidi, on the other hand is preparing to spend her weekend much like she spends her weekdays, lying slothfully all over the house and demanding all of the petting.

I took the day off on Tuesday. As you can see in the background of this photo, we are STILL working on our kitchen. I finished priming the ceiling on my vacation day, and we're hoping to finish painting it this weekend. Then we can put up our fancy, new ceiling fans and we get to throw away the hideous, white, Kountry Kitchen type ceiling fans with cows painted on the pull strings and I am beyond thrilled at the prospect. It's the little things...We'll work our way down the walls and retile the floor at some point. There's nothing strange about a decade long kitchen renovation, right? Sigh.

So, I am so happy that it's Friday and I'm excited about the weekend. Well, except the part where we deal with annoying, fat, cats, that is...

I Haven't Got Room for the Pain

This will be a quick post. Lucky for you all.

I had my first migraine of the year today. There is a big weather front moving in, so I'm not surprised. What is surprising, though, is that this is the first time since I started taking migraine meds when I was 40, that I've gone almost 5.5 weeks without having to take them. It's not that I haven't had a migraine in that time, but that it hasn't been bad enough that I needed meds. Let's hope this starts some kind of trend in my world.